On April 5th, 13 students from the Social Enterprise Institute traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to take part in the Clinton Global Initiative University conference (CGIU). Over the weekend, they presented projects, interacted with students from around the country and world, and listened to leaders in the field such as Read more…
If you are one of the millions of people who drink coffee every morning, consider drinking Green Mountain Coffee, or using one of their Keurig machines. Here’s one reason why.
I was walking up a steep hill in 100 degree heat in Northern Nicaragua earlier this month, with 25 of our social enterprise students, as part of our senior capstone class. We were in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and in one of its poorest regions, when we came upon a sign saying that Green Mountain Coffee, through its corporate social responsibility program, had supported a poor smallholder farmer cooperative with community investments.
Located outside of Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua, La Chureca is a community of 1,200 individuals living in the city’s municipal dump. The community is severely underserved in access to public services and unable to sustain themselves. Manna Project International (MPI), an organization working to empower communities in need through volunteer Read more…
A signature program of SEI is the senior capstone course, Advanced Studies in Social Entrepreneurship. This course helps students understand the role that agricultural cooperatives and enterprises play in alleviating extreme poverty among rural smallholder farmers. To achieve this objective, students travel to Nicaragua to apply their classroom learning and Read more…